


Not His X-Men

by phoenext



Category: Deadly Genesis, X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Fix-It, Fluff, Recovery, recovering from trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 20:55:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7238182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenext/pseuds/phoenext
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'It gets better’ had to be the most cliche phrase Petra could think of, and she had no plans to use it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not His X-Men

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Murf1307](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murf1307/gifts).



Petra eyed her reflection in her glass. Her hair was long until last week, when she wanted a bob after seeing a pretty girl on the street.  
“You cut it again?” Suzanne’s cheeks rounded. “I wondered if you would.”  
Petra laughed and leaned back against her chair on the patio. “You knew I would. It didn’t suit me at all.” She fingered through the short tufts that framed her face.

“I like it.” Suzanne grinned. She had dark eyebrows and bright white teeth, and pores visible only on her cheeks and nose like freckles. Petra wrapped her green jacket tighter around her shoulders.  
“Glad I waited until summer.”  
“Darwin gets by just fine bald.” That smile again, like she was the first to discover her own clever joke. Like she knew just how cute she was, the blonde reflected. She picked away at her polish and watched the squirrels chase each other around linden trees. Weeks of bouncing left her chair with a creak-creak when she rocked, forever designating itself as hers. The glass in her long fingers was the same— she’d thumbed over the logo enough to fade the paint. Suzanne used it once, but Petra looked so thirsty licking her lip like that she quickly handed it over.

—

“Normal school. Like normal people. Not that we’ll ever be normal, or that it’s better than what we are, but you know.”  
“Safe.” Petra’s voice was blank. She thought about leaving all the time, but anyone else? She wasn’t ready. She wanted to keep daydreaming idly about what was out there from around the same, boring company as always.  
“No, I get it. Safe is good. The superhero thing—we never asked for it. It’s not our jobs.”  
They hadn’t don’t the superhero thing for years. Once you’ve fought monsters for your life—for others lives—everyone else seemed so small.  
“Well, congrats on getting in.”  
“You know they have a 96% acceptance rate, but I appreciate it. Really.” They both reached to hold each other’s hands and clunked them together. Petra tucked her chin on Suzanne’s shoulder instead. The dark hair reminded her of nights with blankets pulled over her head when the worst hallucinations kept her up at night. She was warm and protected there until it was time to wake up.

—

It’s not as though Suzanne never tried to be more like other people; she just felt silly for it early on. She’d do her makeup up in a flawless cat eye and the second would look like something else entirely, and she’d just laugh and do it again. Sometimes she’d cry and do it again. Sometimes she’d go without that day, and even as she scanned for judging looks of others she chastised herself for doing so.

Suzanne didn’t believe in perfect, so she didn’t need it. Suzanne was happy with Bs in class. She was happy with the way her life had gone, mostly, and she was happy with Petra. Being happy with everything you have, she explained, doesn’t mean you have to always be plain happy.

—

Petra didn’t get why she seemed to be the slowest to recover. She’d been fighting for years before they got together, and felt she ought to be the most adjusted. Moira said that some people just took longer than others and that was okay. Her therapist said that the more you have to recover from, the longer a brain needs to associate new experiences and replace the old ones. Petra wonders if maybe this is her recovered. Maybe she’s always been like this.

A black cat streaked across her room and faded quickly; only a mirage. She saw a lot of these nonexistent cats. The girl didn’t mind. 

  
—

They had a party before she left. Moira gave her an old university sweatshirt, and Suzanne didn’t make a face until she turned away.  
“It’s so old.” She whispered. “Vintage.”  
Always the chattiest of the house, the nearing loss of the new student was accentuated by the clicking of spoons against bowls.  
“I’ll visit lots, of course. And maybe I won’t even stay the four years.”  
“You don’t have to say that.”

—

A lot of people still looked up to Xavier, the way they had. It was tough to see. Often it was fear of others falling into the same trap. Sometimes it just hurt, like dozens of people who have never met them and and likely never heard of them said their lives don’t matter. In those times, it helped to see people who do remember fighting back. All four of them had googled it before; browsing people’s opinions on their lives. Fans of Magneto referenced it as faulty strategy. Others condemned the use child soldiers. Those were the nicest and hardest to read.

—

  
‘It gets better’ had to be the most cliche phrase Petra could think of, and she had no plans to use it. She’d taken up a sculpting of sorts, creating everything from elaborate cave tunnels to tiny gargoyles and fairies to guard the entrances. Her favorites were the creatures in between.

It was Suzanne’s idea to start writing letters to send back and forth, but Petra took to it quickly. Writing, she found, was much easier than talking out loud, and soon her notebooks filled up with things only she would see. She wrote stories about girls from bad homes being saved and kissed by other girls, and thought they were alright. She tried poetry, too, which she strongly believed could never be either good or bad.

It did get easier. The letters she got were dotted with stickers that brightened up her bedroom walls, and the ones she sent back had the practiced scrawl of a dozen different loopy, messy styles. She learned how to cook. She learned how to be okay with not being that great at cooking. Things got easier, not noticeably at once, but in little ways that were easy to see looking back. But she never got normal, and she wished someone told her along the way they weren’t going to be the same thing.


End file.
